Ed Koch not popular with many Irish during his career -- Late NY Mayor defended British role in North after Irish trip in 1988

Ed Koch celebrating St. Patrick's Day

I never had much time for Ed Koch, the mayor of New York from 1978 to 1989. The mayor died today.

He was a blusterer who early on in his career stopped listening and began pronouncing and never stopped.

I remember interviewing him and seeing that familiar politician’s fault where questions were answered with the same familiar soundbite, year after year.

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He was New York. Larger than life, for better and for worse, and often I felt the latter more than the former.
He was in power too long, somewhat like the current mayor Michael Bloomberg, and had become a poor imitation of himself by the time he stepped down.

On Irish issues he was captive to whomever he last spoke to.

Sure, he wore his big Irish sweater every St. Patrick’s Day and loved being photographed at the parade but at the height of the Northern Ireland "Troubles" he contributed very little to the American role.

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Indeed, his most famous faux pas as far as Irish Americans were concerned occurred in 1988 after he went on a five-day visit over there with his frequent bosom buddy John Cardinal O’Connor.

Here is how his trip was reported on AP:

“Mayor Edward Koch says Irish-Americans who ''beat up the British'' for their role in Northern Ireland are taking the easy way out" ran the headline.

The story ran “The mayor, back at City Hall on Tuesday, defended remarks he made in Dublin earlier in the day at the end of his five-day pilgrimage for peace in Ireland with Cardinal John O'Connor.”

In Dublin, Koch had praised the ''good attitude'' of the British, saying ''I do not believe that they deserve the castigation that any of us, myself included, have heaped upon them. I do not believe that the British are occupying forces.''

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Well that went down well in The Bronx and Flatbush and Koch never quite regained his equilibrium with the Irish as a result.

Hardly surprising.

A new spirit in the Irish community after Rockaways Day of Action -- A real insight into how much a united community can accomplish

The Irish lend a helping hand in the Rockaways
(Photo: Sean McPhail)

The success of the Irish Day of Action in Rockaway when 1,000 Irish descended on the devastated Rockaway Peninsula has led to a new spirit in the Irish community.

Rocked back on its heels by the lack of emigration and the tough times for many of the older Irish organizations, the Rockaway day was an amazing insight into how much the community can still accomplish.

From earliest dawn on Saturday all over New York and in many places upstate the Irish came together in the best spirit of the Meitheal, the Gaelic word meaning a gathering to help neighbors in need.

What was truly heartening was the mixture from the youngest of Irish organizations to the oldest, to the geographic spread across all communities.

The role of the Irish consulate in coordinating the original response was immense.

Many years ago such a leadership role would have been far more difficult. The Northern Irish issue divided the community leading to boycotts stand offs and bad blood.

Read more: 1,000 Irish show up for Rockaway ‘Day of Action’ to rebuild community

That is no longer the case, allowing organizations to exist in a cooperative fashion as was proven on Saturday.

What was also obvious was how perfectly tailored to the problem the Irish response was.

We are a community that deals heavily in construction and skills related.

The Rockaways’ crying need was for such skills, especially electricians who are highly valued there because of the number of houses in need.

What was also stunning was the number of women who turned out, well over the 50 per cent mark.

It was an interesting insight into that Irish quality of empathy and caring so strongly represented in medical fields and child care by women in the main.

For many of the Irish-born who were unfamiliar with the Rockaways and Breezy Point the sight of so many tricolors and Irish name plates outside homes was itself an education into how important the Irish heritage and association for so many.

It was a learning curve all around and a day that ended with good cheer and good feeling. “Ni Neart go Chur Le Cheile” is the old Irish adage. “No strength until we pull together.”

How true.

1,000 Irish show up for Rockaway ‘Day of Action’ to rebuild community - Live aid for stricken Rockaway residents after Hurricane Sandy

On Beach 96th Street in the Rockaways, right by the ocean, the local health clinic was a needed lifeline.

Since Hurricane Sandy however, the clinic has been shuttered, the water made it up to the second floor and everything inside was destroyed.

The mold is visible on the walls, the carpets ruined and destroyed. The clinic is in sad disrepair.

Until Saturday when a hardy bunch of Irish volunteers arrived for the Day of Action.

As team leader Dubliner Eric Moore recounted it was like another hurricane had hit the place, but this time a benign one, driven by the good intentions of an Irish community which showed up in force to help the stricken Rockaways.

By the time I got there neighbors were poking their heads out the window or walking across the street to thank the Irish volunteers.

Just a block from the beach many of their houses had been destroyed when Sandy hit but the arrival of the Irish gave them hope that things were actually going to get better.

The 96th Street location was just one of five in the Rockaways peninsula that the 1,000 Irish who descended went to work on.

In Breezy Point, an AOH division cleaned out a Protestant church, perhaps the first time that has happened in history. The grateful pastor gave his blessings to the mainly Rockland Irish crew who worked all day.

At St. Francis De Salles church the monsignor finally had his basement cleaned out and the sand removed. His church has been the center of much of the activity but he has had not time to clean up his own house – until the Irish arrived.

One of my lasting memories from this day will be a crowd of Irish volunteers outside the parish residence as evening fell, sweeping, brushing, collecting, and clearly happy as they worked.

The day had started in the pre-dawn for most of the Irish.

From early morning 12 buses rolled from The Bronx, Yonkers, Queens, Manhattan and upstate Rockland. Hundreds of others drove by cars and trucks. Important logistical equipment  was  conveyed by Liffey Van Lines.

When the volunteers arrived they fanned out to the pre-scouted locations. While there was some confusion at the beginning at some of the sites, soon work details were available for all.

Right after the green on white Irish Day of Action T shirts (sponsored by Aer Lingus) were seen everywhere as the Irish got to work.

“We knew we needed a response to the events in the Rockaways, we knew from the community that there was a pent up demand to do something,” said Irish consul General Noel Kilkenny.

“We knew there had been lots of fundraisers and we wanted to do something different, “ said Ciaran Staunton of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform one of the main organizers. “So we decided on a Day of Action.”

The different Irish Centers run by Siobhan Dennehy, Orla Kelleher and Paul Finnegan got behind the idea 100 per cent. Deputy Consul General Peter Ryan convened almost daily meetings, even over Thanksgiving and worked with Speaker Christine Quinn on transportation and issues on the ground in Rockaway. Turlough McConnell handled communications with the community.

Location scouts such as Brian McCabe, Owen Rogers and Dan Dennehy went down to Rockaway to find the places of greatest need.

I am happy to say I was one of those original members who sat with Kilkenny and Ryan and decided on the Day of Action.

It was no sure success. It was set for the Saturday after Thanksgiving when many were away. It meant a very early start for the bus in the pre-dawn hour, it meant a lengthy day trip to the Rockaways and was very much dependent on weather.

We should not have worried, Soon the rampant goodwill among the community for those injured and damaged by Sandy turned into a powerful force.

We met so many exceptional people in the Rockaways. At Beach 38th street in St, Gertrude’s church, Reggie Warren and his staff operating in one of the hardest hit African Americans neighborhoods were running a clockwork organization with wall charts showing houses that needed to be cleared and people in need.

In Hamilton Beach, perhaps the hardest hit area after Breezy Point, our volunteers were immediately swept up by the professional crews gathered there and sent to work.

Likewise in Breezy Point the Habitat for Humanity folks had all their ducks in a row and our volunteers shovel ready for work assignments.

Of all the places damaged Breezy Point shocks the most. The area where the 111 houses burned to the ground resembles an atom bomb crater with twisted metal, trees and buildings in every direction.

Breezy is the most Irish town in America according to the U.S Census and it was great to see Old Glory and the Tricolor still flying high despite the massive setbacks.

By day’s end the Irish community had contributed a massive 7,000 man-hours to helping the Rockaways in their huge recovery project.

Many  sat in the heated tent opposite St Frances De Salles church, donated by Irish firm Navillus tired but content and telling the stories of their day and the incredible gratitude shown them by locals.

There were so many warm moments for them, and I know from conversations that many will be making their way down there in the weeks and months ahead.

The Irish community has shown the way on the Rockaways and hopefully many other groups will follow. It was a day for Irish pride no question about it.

GAA goes Broadway in New York as a new era dawns for Gaelic games -- Historic banquet marks major expansion by Ireland’s largest sporting group

GPA Chairman Dónal Óg Cusack pictured with GPA Chief Executive Dessie Farrell

A new era dawned for the GAA Ireland’s leading sporting organization in a New York hotel last night.

The first annual dinner of the Gaelic Players Association, the umbrella group for all the 2,500 top athletes in Gaelic football and hurling, was a smashing success with over 400 prominent Irish Americans as well as the All-Star teams from Ireland.

More importantly however, the New York dinner signaled a fresh assault by Ireland’s leading sporting organization on the lucrative overseas market where tens of thousands already play their games.

Also present last night was GAA president Liam O’Neill who spoke about the new effort to spread Irish games worldwide on the wings of emigrants and the GAA’s legendary amateur status.

Though their players fill arenas as big as Yankee Stadium, the players are unpaid and in many cases,out of pocket as a result of giving their all for Ireland’s premier sports.

It is an incredible achievement and story that deserves far greater coverage and acknowledgement over here. Playing for the love and not the money is a foreign concept in big time sport anywhere in the world except Ireland.

Read more GAA news here

Ireland’s greatest athlete is Henry Shefflin who has nine hurling all Ireland medals, the equivalent of 9 super bowl rings -- but by day he is a bank employee making a relatively modest wage.

Guest of honor on the night was Donald R. Keough, the former top Coca-Cola executive who has done more to ensure bonds between Ireland and America remain closer than ever than any Irish American alive.

He was the one, as a former Chairman of Notre Dame and founder of the Keough Naughton Irish Institute there, who was the prime mover behind Notre Dame playing in Ireland this year-- and what an incredible success that was.

Now the GAA has come to play in America and based on the overwhelming success of the GPA players first dinner, there is a bright future ahead.

The games of hurling and Gaelic football are thrilling, fast moving, and can hold their own with any games on earth. With such a plethora of sports networks now here in America it seems a wonderful opportunity to spread the games of the Gael to new worlds.

The first steps for that American presence were taken in the Marriot Marquis Hotel in New York’s theater district  last night. The GAA are finally going Broadway.

Living through Hurricane Sandy as she came ashore -- Scariest moments of my life as monster storm hit

Hurricane Sandy - Waves hitting shore at Long Island Sound

PHOTOS - Hurricane Sandy hits New York - Super storm causes destruction and flooding - slideshow

In my 33 years in America I have never experienced anything like the last 24 hours. When the news of Hurricane Sandy first broke I thought I’d seen all of this before, having lived through a series of tropical storms and near hurricanes.

But Sandy was different.

I have never seen such decimation in my neighborhood  in Long Island. In my own back garden a huge tree came crashing down. The only warning was a loud crashing sound before it fell. The roads around my house are completely impassable. My brother-in-law took three hours to negotiate three miles in a desperate effort to get to his home.

We have been in pitch blackness since six o’clock at the dreaded moment when the lights went out and the television signal faded to a small white dot. Up and down the neighborhood it seems like a satanic monster has flicked a switch and darkness descended.

Then came the wind. A familiar sound at first, then more like a freight car on a train rattling through the empty streets, bending the trees, breaking many of them, and sending my neighbor's lawn furniture spinning through the air.

There are few times when I have been as frightened, especially when the tallest tree in my block, which was right in my neighbor’s yard, seemed to bend half way and look certain to break with one particularly fierce gust of wind.

If this was only a hurricane one category I can only imagine what a four or five like Hurricane Katrina must have sounded like. It is the stuff of sheer nightmares and terror and yet I know we have been very lucky.

People tell me the scenes from Battery Park City are horrendous and at least five people are already confirmed dead. Who knows how many more will perish.

In Rockaway Beach, one of the most Irish neighborhoods in America, the devastation has been compared to New Orleans, after Katrina. I will probably know some of those people whose homes have been flooded and lives have been changed by this storm.

I have lived through earthquakes and twisters but never through a hurricane and it is surely the scariest experience of my life. The sheer power and scope makes you realize how little we can shape the forces of nature when they decide to descend upon us.

For all those left homeless, for all those left scared and frightened, there is an enormous lesson from this hurricane – mother nature will do what she wants, when she wants, and our  modern world can only bow before it.

Now, as I look out my window, the worst of the storm has passed and I see our forlorn neighbors begin to pick up their lives again I realize the miracle of life more than ever, like after  9/11.

In Samuel Beckett’s words, “I can’t go on, I must go on”. And indeed we must.


PHOTOS - Hurricane Sandy hits New York - Super storm causes destruction and flooding - slideshow

Meeting Romney and Obama on their New York ceasefire night -- A shining moment in a campaign desperately short of them

President Obama, Cardinal Dolan and GOP Candidate
Mitt Romney at Thursday night's charity event in NYC (Credit: AP)

An amazing sight awaited down a long corridor on the second floor of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, past a dark screen and several alert secret service agents and then into a large meeting room.

There, standing less than five feet apart, separated by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, were the two men fighting tooth and nail for the most important job in the world, the President of the United States.

As I approached I could not but feel an extraordinary sense of pride. What an amazing statement about this country, that the two men in the midst of a titanic battle could set the battle aside and come together in the cause of raising $5 million for New York’s neediest.

President Obama and Mitt Romney seemed utterly at ease. I complimented Obama on his Irish trip and he reminisced for a moment about it. “I need that Irish Moneygall vote,” he joked, referencing the village in Offaly where his ancestors hailed from.

Mitt Romney is ramrod straight, far younger looking than his 65 years, and his wife Ann is even prettier than she appears on TV. They are a striking couple, side by side.

I asked Romney would he visit Ireland if elected. “Of course,” he said, “I’m a Massachusetts politician, what would you expect,” he joked.

Later, on stage, the two men gave command performances, firing punch lines not punches back and forth so rapidly that sometimes it was hard to catch them.

They were in New York for the annual Al Smith dinner, the great lollapalooza of New York politics, where everyone gathers for the annual rite of reminiscence to the first Irish Catholic to run seriously for president.

Read more on the US Election 2012

Henry Kissinger (he’s still alive!) was there, so was Ed Koch, Katie Couric, Chris Matthews, Governor Andrew Cuomo, Senator Chuck Schumer to name a few, and every bishop and major businessman and woman in the five boroughs and Long Island.

MC was Al Smith IV, great grandson of the late and great Al and a born comedian with a wonderful sense of timing as he made the introductions. His best line was that Mitt Romney created more sons (five) than Obama did jobs.

Romney has a sense of comic timing that was unexpected to me. He seems ill at ease often in such settings but not last night, where his zingers found their target and the crowd guffawed and laughed along.

Obama proved equal to the task, if not quite as funny. His best line was how Mitt was Romney’s second name and he was lucky to have it as he couldn’t use his own much (it’s Hussein).

He also gave a spoiler alert for Monday night’s debate on foreign policy (look away -- we killed Bin Laden if you hadn’t heard).

The real surprise for me was Cardinal Dolan who made an impassioned speech about what he called the “un’s” in America, the unemployed, the undocumented, the unborn, the unmarried mothers, the unfit and forlorn. It was a passionate plea for both candidates to note that the government’s major role was to help those who could not help themselves.

Dolan had come under pressure not to invite Obama because of the abortion issue. He proved last night he had done exactly the right thing and showed the power of the Catholic Church in so doing.

The 1,500 or so of those who attended went home happy and sated. As an immigrant, it was one of those occasions I thanked my lucky stars I had come to America.

With so much at stake the two men fighting it out for the White House found time to come together to help and raise money for those in need.

It was an extraordinary moment in a campaign known for its nastiness but one also capable of being kinder, gentler.

We need more of that to lift people up.

Thousands across U.S. gathered for Donegal-Mayo standoff -- Irish Diaspora shows up in record numbers for All-Ireland football final

Donegal become All Ireland champions for 2012

Long Island: I doubt if there has ever been a bigger crowd at the Irish Center in Mineola, New York for an Irish football game as there was on Sunday.

From early morning hundreds came streaming in from all over Long Island and Queens to see the novel final pairing between Mayo and Donegal in the All Ireland football final. It was a scene duplicated all over America and the world in Irish centers, bars and restaurants as well as online.

It was a beautiful September day, but the Irish Center crowd was much more interested to hear that the wind was blowing strongly in Ireland, which would affect the flow of the game.

By the time of the national anthem played live from Dublin’s Croke Park there was nowhere to sit and a deep sense of quiet pride was felt.

For emigrants to see Dublin’s Croke Park packed with fellow Irish, to see the Tricolor fluttering, to feel the same identity that crosses oceans and continents is always a profound moment.

Young and old, Donegal and Mayo fans as well as many neutrals came to see the Irish Super Bowl, the major game of the year between two counties who have endured massive emigration and were considered long shots to make it to the final at the beginning of the year.

The crowds at the Irish Center and elsewhere are dictated by which teams are playing, Kilkenny, hurling kingpins, will not draw any large numbers as relatively few have emigrated to the U.S. from the Leinster county.

On the other hand, Cork, Kerry, Mayo and Donegal bring out massive numbers, successive generations having left their far-flung homes in those counties to come to America.

For Mayo people, the All Ireland has become a trail of tears. Since they won their last one in 1951 they have contested six finals, including yesterday, and lost them all.

They are the Chicago Cubs of Gaelic football, lovable but always no cigar. Yet their fans continue to turn out in massive numbers as they did on Sunday, undeterred and bruised but not broken by the final result, which saw Donegal win deservedly.

Donegal are now 2 for 2 in all Ireland final appearances, their last appearance and win was twenty years ago. Like Mayo they are a county wracked by emigration and unemployment and their football team has become an emotional touchstone for Ireland’s most isolated county.

Remember, these are amateur players playing for the pride of their county and no money and a few dollars in expenses.

I spent some time in Donegal a few weeks ago and every available public space was plastered with Donegal team slogans.

Their victory will be more important to them than a Super Bowl for New York.

Donegal won, but the Irish love of sports and unique identity was the biggest winner of all. Despite all the bad news out of Ireland, the final proved once again that some Irish institutions will stand forever.

The GAA and the All Ireland football final are paramount among them.

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